Chapter 1: An Important Decision

Contents

Choosing a college is often the second most important decision in life-
exceeded only by the choice of a wife or a husband. In money terms, college
can easily be the second largest expenditure in life-exceeded only by the cost
of a house. (Some colleges cost more for four years than the average
cost of a house in some states.) College is more than a preparation for a
career. Often the person who graduates has become a different person from
what he or she was as an entering freshman. Moreover, the imprint of a
particular college or university can remain for life. Decades later, people
may say knowingly, "He was a West Pointer," or "She went to Bennington" or "He
is a Chicago economist." Many writers have commented on the fact that Lyndon
Johnson's relations with the Kennedys were soured by his awareness that they
went to Harvard while he graduated from Southwest Texas State Teachers
College. For better or worse, the choice of a college has lifelong
implications.

At its best, the right college can open up whole vistas to the mind and be an
exhilarating experience, like being born again. Many alumni are grateful for
life for what their colleges did for them-and this gratitude translates into
billions of dollars in donations annually to provide scholarships and other
expenditures necessary to keep these opportunities alive for a new
generation.

At its worst, college can be a tiresome chore without meaning-a burden that
many cannot endure for four long years. It is not uncommon for a fourth or a
half of all students on many campuses to fail to make it through to
graduation. That is by no means the worst of it. Psychiatric problems are
widespread at some of the most prestigious colleges, sometimes ending in
suicide. At Harvard, a thousand students a year seek psychiatric help at the
university's Mental Health Service.

When I taught at Cornell University during the 1960s, I was told that they
averaged about a suicide a year among the students. Some years later, while
teaching at U.C.L.A., I was surprised on my way to the office one morning to
see an attractive, well-dressed young lady lying gracefully in the bushes,
apparently asleep. Only the presence of policemen nearby alerted me to the
grim reality: Less than an hour before, she had jumped from the roof of the
building to her death. Somewhere, no doubt, there were parents whose hearts
would be broken before nightfall.

In short, the stakes are very high, personally as well as educationally, when
choosing a college. The problem is not to find a "good" college or the "best"
college. The perfect college for one student can be a disaster for another.
A student who would love Reed College would probably be miserable at Brigham
Young University, and vice versa (among numerous differences, it is easier to
get cocaine at Reed College than it is to get Coca-Cola at BYU). Every
significant feature of a college can differ enormously from one institution to
another.

Academically, the quality of work that would get you an A at one
college would not be good enough to get you a C at another. The
average mathematics score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test among students at
Harvey Mudd College is greater than the combined math and verbal SAT scores at
Cheyney University.

Socially, there are many places like Williams College, Mills College, or the
Florida Institute of Technology, where men can spend the night in women's
rooms. It is called "24-hour intervisitation" or "intervisitation unlimited,"
in the jargon with which academics surround plain facts. As one academic
administrator at a west coast institution told me privately: "We don't know
what goes on in the dormitories and we don't want to know." At the other end
of the spectrum, Pepperdine University continues to maintain the kind of
strict control over visits by the opposite sex that was widespread a
generation ago.

At some colleges, you will see graffiti everywhere. At other colleges, you
will see graffiti nowhere-not even in the toilets. Tuition alone costs over
$10,000 a year at some colleges, but it is only $300 a year at Cooper Union-a
good institution with an outstanding engineering school. Some colleges, such
as Bard or Evergreen, are politically left and far left while others, such as
Hillsdale or Wabash, are solidly conservative. Whenever people tell you what
"everybody" is doing at colleges these days, they are wrong. There are some
important general trends-positive and negative-but there is still an enormous
range of diversity. This is both a challenge and an opportunity. Somewhere,
there is at least one place that is good for each individual-and one is
enough, but finding it will take some work. There are literally thousands of
colleges and universities in the United States, some two-year, some four-year,
some with only a few hundred students and others with more than 40,000; some
in rural New England or overlooking Malibu Beach, and others in downtown New
York, Atlanta, or Chicago.

There are a number of sources of help in sorting through all this, but you
also need to keep a skeptical eye on some of those who are helping you.
Alumni tend to have an exaggerated notion of how high their Alma Mater rates.
Some will look you straight in the eye and tell you that Podunk A&M is just
as good as any school in the Ivy League. Some even believe it. High school
counselors can sometimes be helpful but they can also lead you straight into a
catastrophe. The quality of high school counselors varies as widely as the
colleges themselves.

Some counselors present a special problem when they see their role as
sidetracking the parents, so that the student can make his or her own
decision, under the guidance of the counselor. Parents should not let
themselves be intimidated by the counselor's "expertise." If the decision
turns out to be wrong for their child-and wrong can include anything from
flunking out or getting pregnant to being caught up in the drug culture for
life-the counselor will not lose one dime or one hour's sleep. Each parent
knows better than anyone else what it will cost to see his or her child
ruined.

It is fashionable nowadays for educational "professionals" to look down their
noses at those parents who don't go along with the latest fads, as if such
parents were bumpkins or Archie Bunkers. But, when you think about it, the
negative opinion of shallow people is a very small price to pay to safeguard
your child's future. When my daughter's high school counselor wrote me that I
would be "kept informed" as to what they were deciding about colleges, I knew
it was time to ignore that counselor and seek information elsewhere.
There are a number of informative guides on the market which can give you
useful information about particular colleges. But, although college guides
may not vary as widely as counselors' opinions, they can still vary
considerably. For example, according to Barron'sProfilesofAmericanColleges, admission to Whitman College
is rated "Very Competitive +" but TheARCOGuide:TheRightCollege, rates Whitman's admissions
standards as "Non-competitive." While the Insider'sGuidetotheColleges lists the psychology department at
Knox College as among that school's best departments, Edward Fiske's
SelectiveGuidetoColleges suggests that
psychology is among Knox's worst departments.

However statistical, official, or "scientific" some guides may look, they are
still written by human beings. That means that none can be followed blindly
and all require further efforts on your part to get more information. The
best can only point you in the right general direction. You must investigate
further on your own. (Chapters 8-12 of this book suggest how to go about
it.)

The most important information of all is information about the particular
student, and that cannot be found in any guide. The student's academic level
and individual personality are crucial in deciding which kinds of colleges
make sense for him or her, and which should be eliminated from consideration
at the outset. This elimination process is essential because you cannot read
hundreds of institutional descriptions in a huge college guide, much less send
away for catalogues and brochures to investigate each one further. Each
student's scholastic ability should be tested, preferably before the senior
year of high school, to get some idea of what kinds of colleges to be thinking
about. More than a million high school seniors annually take the Scholastic
Aptitude Test (S.A.T.), the most widely used college entrance examination, and
more than three-quarters of a million high school seniors take the American
College Testing Program (ACT) examination, which serves the same purpose.
These tests are by no means perfect and critics have stirred up a great deal
of controversy about their imperfections, both real and imaginary. Yet
nothing better has come along.

The test results can be enormously valuable when it comes time to select a
dozen or so institutions worth serious investigation. The average verbal
score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test has been around 430 points in recent
years and the average math score around 470 points, for a total of about 900
points out of a possible 1600. There are many very good colleges whose
students' average combined SAT scores total about 1000 and are therefore
within the academic range for most high school students who go on to college.
Some of the top colleges and universities, however, have students whose
combined SAT totals are about 1400, so that schools like these (Yale,
Stanford, Cal Tech, M.I.T.) are far too demanding for most students.

A college's average SAT score is a useful rough indication of whether your
scores put you in or out of the ball park as far as that school is concerned.
If your math and verbal SAT's combined are 100 points below the college's
average, that is not out of the ball park. But if they are 200 points below,
you are probably pressing your luck. Every college has its anecdotes
about students with low scores who did wonderfully. There are also
illiterates who became millionaires. But most people go with the percentages,
instead of betting their future on a long shot. College is too serious a
choice to let other people's anecdotes lead you into a bad gamble. But that
doesn't mean that there is no leeway at all in schools you can reasonably
apply to.

Colleges and universities themselves allow considerable leeway in admitting
students and few have a rigid cutoff according to test scores. At Emory
University, for example, the average combined S.A.T. score of the freshman
class is 1200 but the range is from 1010 to 1580. At many colleges, your
chances of acceptance vary with test scores and class rank, but you do have a
chance over a very wide range-and no certainty, even with a top record, at the
more selective institutions. Amherst College, for example, admitted 46
percent of those who applied for the class of 1991 with verbal S.A.T. scores
of 750 and above, and 14 percent of those who applied with verbal S.A.T.'s in
the 500s. Harvard says: "Most of our successful applicants have test scores
ranging from 500 to 800 but high test scores are no guarantee of admissions
and low scores do not necessarily mean exclusion." That is also true at many
other places. Where the admissions pressures are not as extreme, high
scores and high class rank create a much higher probability of admissions, but
the general principle remains the same-no guarantees that you will be in or
out. Duke University accepted 63 percent of those who scored 750 or higher on
the verbal S.A.T., Bowdoin College 86 percent, and Davidson College 81
percent. In all three, less than half of those scoring in the 500s on verbal
S.A.T. were admitted. Still, in absolute numbers, all three institutions
accepted more students in the 500 range than in the 750 and up range. Such
patterns are common in a variety of institutions and are found whether you
look at verbal S.A.T., math S.A.T., class rank, A.C.T. score or other
indicators. Colleges tend to take many things into account beside test
scores, grade point averages or class rankings. Some seek social diversity in
their students and may accept lower test scores and other credentials from
students whose ethnic group is statistically "under-represented." Some
schools seek geographic diversity and may admit students from far away with
somewhat lower qualifications than they demand from students located within
their state or region. Others-especially state colleges and universities-do
just the reverse and give preference to those within the state, both in
admission standards and tuition charges.

Beyond some point, all this flexibility in admissions standards can be a trap
for the student. Colleges serve their own institutional purposes by lowering
standards for athletes, ethnic minorities, alumni children, and others, but
the students admitted under these lower standards can find themselves in big
trouble academically. The cold fact is that test scores and high school
grades are correlated with college performance. Freshmen whose past
performance falls well below those of their college classmates have less
chance of surviving. All the pretty talk in the world about "diversity," or
about how we are "not competing," does not change that.

Almost all colleges and universities will accept athletes with lower
qualifications than other students-sometimes disgracefully lower. It is
common at colleges and universities across the country for athletes to finish
four years of school with no degree-not even in the easy subjects that many
college athletes major in. It is considered very unusual that athletes at
Penn State University generally graduate and that coach Joe Paterno, who
insists that his players get an education, still manages to win football games
"with real students," as USAToday put it.

Test scores are of course not the only indicator of academic ability. How
well you did in high school is probably an even better guide to how well you
will do in college. Unfortunately, grading standards vary so much from school
to school-especially from a public school in the slums to a private boarding
school in the suburbs-that it is more difficult to get a reliable measure of
high school performance. Standardized admissions tests like the SAT and the
ACT came into general use precisely for this reason.

Academic standards in general, and test scores in particular, are a good way
to begin eliminating some of the thousands of colleges and universities that
are available, to get down to those worth serious investigation because they
are within your academic range. (Virtually all college guides give the
average test scores of various colleges.) Other considerations will reduce the
number of colleges still further, until finally you have a short enough list
to proceed with a closer look at specific schools, including perhaps a visit
to the campuses.

The personality, hopes, and style of the individual student are as crucial as
academic ability, when trying to match the person with the college. A shy,
introverted student can easily get lost for four years on a campus with 30,000
or 40,000 students, sitting in classes so big that the professor knows no
one's name and never calls on anyone for give-and-take discussion. The social
life of such a person can be virtually non-existent in such a setting or-worse
yet-may involve going along with whatever is being done by the group they fall
in with, out of fear of loneliness. On the other hand, brash self-starters
who know exactly what they want, and insist on getting it, may do all right in
this setting-despite the anonymity, indifferent faculty members, and a large,
suffocating bureaucracy. Most people are not at these extremes, but it makes
an enormous difference where you stand on the spectrum. A small college, with
perhaps a thousand or so students, is a much better bet for those who could
easily get lost in a crowd or be overwhelmed by a massive bureaucracy to whom
they are just a number.

Values and behavior patterns are also important in matching student and
college. Not every 18-year-old girl is ready to live in a room with boys'
rooms on each side of her, and not every parent thinks it's a good idea. At
some colleges, one of the painful situations a girl can experience is having
her roommate's boyfriend spend the night in their room.

Co-ed dorms are a fact of life on most campuses, but how people behave in them
differs. Whether they are set up with different floors for men and women or
in some other way, may also affect that behavior. The attitudes of the other
students and of college officials probably matter even more. Despite the
popularity of co-ed dorms, some colleges still offer a choice of single-sex or
co-ed dorms, and others still stick exclusively to single-sex dorms. If this
is an important concern, then it should be added to the list of considerations
used to select or eliminate colleges. Given the widespread acceptance of co-
ed dorms, this consideration may narrow your list faster than some others.
Still, you are looking for only about a half a dozen colleges to apply to and
only one to attend. (There are many colleges where most students do
not live in coed dorms and a list of 50 of them can be found in
Chapter 6.)

Religion is another aspect of values for many people. Some are simply looking
for a campus where the religious person finds acceptance rather than
condescension or sneers. Others want a college with a positive affirmation of
religious values, or perhaps the values of their own particular faith or
denomination. Almost all colleges and universities have houses of worship on
campus, but they vary in how much they have beyond that. In general, the more
stringent your requirements, the narrower your choices. Still, in purely
quantitative terms, there are nearly a hundred Baptist colleges, more than a
hundred Methodist colleges, and more than two hundred Catholic colleges.
Lutherans, Mormons, Presbyterians, Quakers, and others also have their own
institutions.

State colleges and universities are of course non-denominational and many of
the top private institutions likewise have no special religious character,
even when founded by, or nominally affiliated with, a particular church.
Brandeis University is Jewish in origin but has large Christian chapels on
campus and imposes no religious requirements on anyone. Catholic colleges and
universities span a wide range of religious policies, as well as academic
quality, with prestigious Georgetown University and high-quality Holy Cross
College being among the best academically. Some of the more fundamentalist
Protestant denominations have nothing comparable in academic standing to
Georgetown or Holy Cross. The Quakers, however, established three of the top-
rated colleges in the country in Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr, but
here again the church connection imposes no special religious requirements on
their students.

Where the religious affiliation does have an important effect on the campus
environment, those whose own personal commitments match those of the
institution may feel more at home-and those who don't share that commitment
may feel more uncomfortable, or even isolated. Nearly 300 colleges have
compulsory chapel attendance, for example. Other church-related colleges leave
such matters entirely to the individual. But, even where the institution
imposes no special rules, the fact that the student body is overwhelmingly of
one faith can affect the whole atmosphere for those who share that faith, and
for those who don't.

Some students (or their parents) are looking for colleges with structure,
rules, and values. They want the faculty and the administration to establish
a curriculum with required basic courses, as well as rules of conduct to guide
the students' maturation from adolescent to adult. Other students and parents
want freedom above all-freedom to take whatever courses arouse the greatest
interest and freedom to live whatever lifestyle seems the most fulfilling.
There are many colleges catering to both extremes, as well as others in the
middle. Brooke Shields, for example, was able to graduate from Princeton
without taking a single course in mathematics, history, chemistry, economics,
physics, or biology. Some will think that was wonderful; others, that it was
terrible. The important thing is for students and parents to think through
what they want in this regard, and make that another point on which to select
or eliminate colleges.

One thing that should not automatically eliminate any college is the cost of
tuition. Despite the most modest income, or even poverty, it may be possible
to attend the most expensive college or university. The top colleges and
universities are often the most richly endowed, and can afford to offer the
largest amount of financial aid. Harvard, for example, provides financial aid
to two-thirds of its students. There were more than 600 scholarships awarded
in the Harvard Class of 1990, averaging well over $6,000 a year each. In
addition, there are also loans available from the college itself and from the
government, totalling more than $7 million a year. As a low-income student
myself more than 30 years ago, I went to Harvard because there was simply no
place else that I could afford to go full-time.

While not all institutions can match the massive financial aid available at
Harvard, many less well-known institutions are able to do quite well in this
respect. The Rochester Institute of Technology, Whitworth College, and
Willamette University, for example, each averages $5,500 per student annually
in financial aid based on need-and each has tuition about half that of
Harvard's, so the money goes further. At many state universities, the tuition
for state residents is quite low, so that a fairly modest financial aid package will be sufficient for even a poverty-stricken student. At the
University of California at Berkeley, for example, 40 percent of the students
receive financial aid based on need, and while these average only $3,500 per
year, the tuition at Berkeley (for California residents) is only about one-
tenth the tuition at Harvard.

At least partial financial aid is widely available, even to students from
families whose annual income exceeds $50,000. At many colleges only a small
minority of students actually pay the full tuition listed in the catalogue.
The larger the tuition, the more likely that is to be so. You certainly don't
need to be either poverty- stricken or a genius to get financial aid of some
kind. More than 900 colleges, universities, and technical institutes provide
financial aid for every freshman who demonstrates any "need" by their
criteria.

While most financial aid in recent years has been based on "need" as that is
broadly defined by the college, a few institutions are beginning to move back
toward scholarships based on scholarship, though still retaining need-based
financial aid as well. Among the institutions where non-need- based financial
aid averages $5,000 a year or more per recipient are the University of
Chicago, Boston University, Tulane, Holy Cross, Northwestern, Mills College,
Villanova, Trinity College (Connecticut), and the Polytechnic Institute of New
York. Moreover, state universities usually have low enough tuition that
smaller scholarships than this will be more than adequate.

Despite all this, it will still require some effort for an average student
from an average-income family to finance a good college education. Perhaps
the best place to start looking for specific colleges to match both the
academic and financial capabilities of such a student would be Edward Fiske's
guide, TheBestBuysinCollegeEducation. Unfortunately, like most college guides, it does not
include two-year colleges, which are another option when income and academic
records are both limited.

The local reputation of two-year colleges is about all that you can go by, in
many cases. It may be worth asking in the admissions office of a reputable
state university how easy it is to transfer in from the two-year college you
are considering, and how well previous transfer students from there have
survived in the more rigorous state university. Even if you don't plan to
transfer to that state university, the information can be valuable when
choosing among two-year colleges. Some states have formal policies requiring
the admission of community college graduates to the state university system.
However, that tells you nothing about how many community college graduates do
go on, or with what results. But there is a useful list of more than a
hundred two-year colleges where more than three-quarters of their graduates go
on to four-year colleges in NationalCollegeDatabank, published by Peterson's Guides, Inc.

Whatever the student's academic ability and financial needs, it is usually
best to avoid working at a job while going to school, or to minimize the hours
if it is unavoidable. A bigger loan is far preferable to more hours of work.
College represents an enormous investment of time, money, effort, and
emotion. This investment should not be jeopardized for the relatively small
sums of money to be earned on a part-time job.

The hours spent on the job are not a real measure of how much it takes away
from learning. It is not just the hours, but the fact that these hours are
usually fixed, which reduces the effectiveness of study. Some subjects-
especially math and the sciences-require sustained, concentrated study for as
long as it takes to wrestle with a given problem. If you are two hours into
your assignment when time comes to go off to your job, there is no assurance
that you can come back three or four hours later and pick it up right where
you left off. The mind just doesn't work that way. Moreover, the fatigue
factor affects your sharpness, whether you go to work before or in the middle
of your studying. You may not feel tired, but losing a little of your edge
can be the difference between understanding and not understanding a difficult
subject. It would be truly penny-wise and pound-foolish to find yourself
gradually forced out of difficult-and rewarding-subjects into something
easier, simply because a part-time job left you operating at less than 100
percent.

Because your earning power will almost always be greater after graduating, it
will take fewer hours of work to repay a college loan then than it would take
to earn the same money while in college. Moreover, the time you spend working
after graduation does not hurt your education and the academic record you take
to a graduate school or an employer. From every perspective, it makes sense
to borrow more money rather than spend more hours on a job while in college.
College loans usually are not difficult to repay and are not due until your
education is completed, even if that is after graduate school. No one
wants to begin a career carrying a burden of debt. But a good academic record
is usually worth dollars and cents, whether in terms of starting salary, or in
terms of how long it takes to land a good job, or your chances for a graduate
fellowship. Even in the first few years after finishing college or graduate
school, this can more than offset your payments on a college loan. In the
long run, getting the best preparation for a rewarding career and life means
far more than the money you earn on a campus job.

People differ not only in their academic abilities, personalities, finances,
and values, but also in what they expect from a college. To some, a college
means ivy-covered buildings, fraternities, sororities, football, and parties,
with academic work almost an after-thought. They will probably have no
trouble finding colleges to accommodate them. To others, colleges are places
to prepare for a well-paying career, either immediately after graduation or
after medical school, law school, or the like. These individuals will have to
exercise care in selecting their colleges, for their academic backgrounds can
have much to do with their later success in their careers. Finally, there are
those for whom college is primarily a place to develop their minds and
discover new dimensions of life. These will probably have the hardest task of
all in selecting the right institution-and perhaps the most fulfilling rewards
when they find it. Scholar and best-selling author Allan Bloom recalled how,
as a youngster, "I saw the University of Chicago for the first time and
somehow sensed that I had discovered my life." That discovery can take place
in many places and in many ways for many people.

Whatever you are seeking in a college, and whatever abilities you bring to it,
what is crucial is that you understand what your requirements and capabilities
are. There are simply too many colleges, universities, and institutes of
technology for intelligent selections to be made without first understanding
clearly your own goals and your resources for meeting them. The basic theme
of this chapter has been "Know thyself." The theme of the chapters that
follow is "Know thy college."